Hi. I'm in the UK and self-publishing ebooks for general consumption in the UK. Im currently using d2d but im increasingly unimpressed with having to jump through US tax hoops associated with US based d2d and others. I really don't want to give the US my personal information just to sell UK authored ebooks to a UK audience. Does anyone know of a UK based ebook self publishing company? Cheers.
Firstly you don't want a self publishing company - you want a market place (even if you found a uk based agregator like d2d you'd still have to complete the american tax info to access the majority of the markerts) secondly it's not worth actively avoiding the american market - tax info is mandatory for amazon and they have at time of writing 73% of the global ebook market... even if you aren't interested in selling in america you'd still need it to access the uk market... the same goes for ibooks, google play and B&N thirdly Kobo is kinda what you want since they are canada based (their parent Rakuten is japanese) but you will still have to give them some tax info to demonstrate you are in a country with a tax treaty with canada End of the day completely the W8-BEN is easy and painless and a one time thing for each vendor, so it really isnt worth cutting yourself off from the vast majority of the market just to avoid it
That's really helpful. Thanks for that. It also possibly explains why my kobo sales are reasonable. But I'm really surprised there aren't more international players in the ebook selling market. I've found that there is a growing resentment (is that the right word?) against the big online US companies, such as Amazon. I know many people who flat-out will not buy anything from them, for a variety of reasons. The audience for the kind of stuff I write falls into this alternative / progressive demographic who eschew the mainstream so having my stuff in the mainstream isn't really a good thing. I've delisted off of Amazon for this reason. I've had all sorts of problems with the W8 form submission process. D2d keeps telling me there are issues. It's probably just me being difficult. I am really uncomfortable with my personal details being on file in a country that has nothing to do with my work. I would imagine it would be the same if a US author writing books aimed at the US market was forced to have their personal details on file in China or the EU. Nothing inherently wrong, it's just uncomfortable. I wonder if there is scope for a new global ebook selling platform to disrupt the big US-centric sellers? Perhaps something based on alternative currencies and aimed at a truly global emerging market?
It ought to be really straight forward - there's a guide around somewhere that i used, i'll see if i can find it for you. You use your NI number as the tax reference ETA: here https://selfpublishingadventures.com/tax/ its a little bit date now - refers to create space instead of kdp print but its still accurate as regards completing the w8ben - make sure you read the updates at the end of the article
